


Canon divergence and fix-its

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [25]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-20
Updated: 2014-02-20
Packaged: 2019-09-11 22:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: Which fandoms have the most canon divergence?





	Canon divergence and fix-its

**Author's Note:**

> Originally [posted to Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/77359187022/toastystats-canon-divergence-toastystats) in 2014.

**TOASTYSTATS: CANON DIVERGENCE**

**[[Toastystats overview](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/stats)]**

Canon divergence is a special sort of AU; it is pretty much the closest possible universe to the existing story, but at some point, the author makes a different choice than the original story.  I was curious which fandoms on AO3 have a large amount of canon divergence.

**Which fandoms have the most fanworks tagged Canon Divergence by frequency?**

I looked at AO3's list of the top 10 fandoms using the tag "Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence" (which is an umbrella tag that also includes related subtags).  It turns out some fandoms with higher usages were missing from this list.  So I also checked most of the [top 50 fandoms](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/57933835699/what-are-the-most-common-fandoms-on-ao3-right-now) on AO3 (that list is messy; I didn't understand AO3 fandom categorization when I created it, but I looked at some version of most of those fandoms). Then I thresholded the set at 300 fanworks.

**Caveat 1:** there may be other fandoms with a lot of usage of this tag that I did not find.  I haven't done a comprehensive analysis of all AO3 fandoms, so there's no guarantee this is all the fandoms with at least 300 Canon Divergence fanworks.

**Caveat 2:** like most of my analyses, this depends on how people use tags more than actual fic content.  There may be lots of fanworks out there that are canon divergent but not tagged that way.  There may be biases toward using that tag more or less in certain fandoms.  So this isn't actually an indication that these are the fandoms where people most want to change the existing story.

**Caveat 3:** This list is basically mostly the same as the really popular fandoms.  What's possibly more interesting is the popular fandoms that don't make it on here.  The RPF fandoms (which don't have the same sort of 'canon', per se), Homestuck, Buffy, and Stargate are among the highly popular fandoms that didn't have as much usage of this tag.

**Which fandoms tag a high percentage of their fanworks Canon Divergence** **?**

When we divide the number of works with this tag by the number in the fandom overall, we get a much different picture -- out of these fandoms, The Hobbit (all media types) and A Song of Ice and Fire lead the pack with a substantial amount of canon divergence.

**Caveat 4:** There may be smaller fandoms out there with a much higher percentage of canon divergence.  I didn't look at very many other fandoms besides the ones shown here.  A few others that I tested:

  * **Hunger Games:** 3.9% 
  * **Smallville:** 1.1%
  * **LoTR:** 1.3%
  * **Homestuck:** 0.7%



**How does this compare to Fix-It fic?**

"Fix-It" is another tag commonly applied to canon divergent fic, but it's less common (4114 fanworks vs. 14410) than the previous tag.  I was curious if it was used the same way.  The top 10 fandoms for "Fix-It" include a  couple we didn't see before -- Torchwood and XMFC.  I also included all the fandoms from the previous analyses for comparison purposes.


End file.
